An unexpected win
THE most that editor Kate Choo has ever done to teach her special needs teenage daughter Jade Lee living skills is to get her to wash her own dishes and throw her clothes in the laundry basket. It was something she thought she’d have more time to do when she retires and Jade got older.
But during the movement control order, Choo had to start including Jade in handling household and cooking chores.
“With longer working hours and no outside help, it was not possible for me to do everything myself, so I started getting Jade to help me cook our daily meals,” says Choo who had previously taught Jade basic cutting methods during their weekend cooking sessions.
They both enjoy eating, and meals are treated as special occasions in their home.
But cooking daily for the past year has given Choo the chance to teach Jade other skills as well, such as listening to instructions, following step by step directions and understanding how her favourite dishes are made.
It’s an immersive experience and Jade is encouraged to do everything, right from knowing the names of ingredients as lays them out on the countertop. She also handles all the tasks involved, from peeling onions to turning on the stove, stir-frying to ladling out curries into serving dishes.
“We make it a sensory experience. She touches all the ingredients and does all the tasks from cutting chicken to chopping garlic to squeezing tamarind. I also make her smell herbs and lemon and taste its sourness, and she tastes everything we cook,” adds Choo who has to be vigilant in the kitchen with her daughter as she is aware accidents can happen around fire, hot oil, and sharp knives. Many tasks do not come naturally to Jade who has fine motor issues but she learns to calmly wipe up spills or asks for help, learning phrases like “I don’t know” or “Help me”. Having grasped the basics of kitchen work, Jade is now learning finer skills such as avoiding spillage and not making a mess, and measuring ingredients more precisely.
So far they have fared well, as cooking meals together also gives their monotonous lockdown days structure and highlight.
Working from home takes more hours, and if they had not taken an hour at noon and an hour in the evening to cook, mother and child wouldn’t have much opportunity to interact.
After awhile, Choo also started planning meals with Jade.
They’d go through the foodstuff they have in the pantry and fridge and decide what they wanted to cook. During mealtimes, Choo would also go over what ingredients went into the dishes they were eating and also the steps they took to make the dishes.
“Jade got into the rhythm of things quickly. She paid attention, and wanted to do everything. I let her do most things, even frying fish but I’d teach her how to put in the fish gently so the oil doesn’t splatter. She was observant, and soon she was putting away vegetables that we don’t need back into the fridge without being told. She also learnt to clean on the go, so if she wasn’t doing anything else she would be washing what’s left in the sink.
By the end of the movement control order last year, Jade was not only able to make simple dishes such as rice and stir fried vegetables, but she also benefited in unexpected ways.
“One day I asked Jade for a glass of water. The jug on the dining table was empty, so she filled it with water from the kettle. As she’d emptied the kettle, she then filled it up and boiled a fresh pot. It was a revealing episode for me as it means she had thought ahead a few steps and done all that without being told. After that I started taking note of all the things she was doing without being told, and it was delightful and amazing,” shares Choo.
Jade was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and struggled with rigidity, and was not given to spontaneity. So, developing dynamic thinking is a major breakthrough for the 18-year-old who has been in therapy since she was 18 months old.
She has little expressive speech, and is just starting to develop reciprocal speech.
By involving her in cooking, Choo had enabled Jade to learn functional skills which has helped her interact meaningfully with her environment.
In her e-book,
Brains: Breakthrough and Beyond
on neuroplasticity, therapist Foo Siang Mun asserts that functionality enables special needs individuals to make sense of how things work and enables them to interact menanigfully with their immediate environment.
“In layman terms, I think it’s just nice for my daughter to feel useful. She is aware of her role and tasks she needs to do, and she is happy to do chores with minimal prompting.
She also likes making decisions on what we buy at the grocery stores,” adds Choo who also gets Jade to help with laundry and cleaning their apartment.
But what has been most delightful is witnessing the teenager developing an awareness of her capabilities and her eagerness to contribute. She now gathers the car keys when they go out, aware that her mother sometimes leave then behind.
Although the movement control order’s restrictions have been difficult in many ways, it has given this mother and daughter invaluable space and time, and they will look back at this pandemic as a time of Jade forging her independence.
ANXIETY, stress, depression, and unhappiness are direct consequences of the covid-19 pandemic, which has been going on worldwide for more than a year.
While health professionals continue to sound the alarm about this public health problem, consumers seem keen to take their personal well-being in hand and find ways to be kind to themselves in uncertain times.
Self-love and self-acceptance – two notions gaining traction in the media – seem to be of particular concern to the world’s population right now. According to data published by Pinterest, searches on the network for the questions “how can I love myself?” and “how can I heal myself?” have increased sixand four-fold, respectively, in recent months.
It seems that people have decided to take control of their mental health, tackling these issues headon to keep themselves afloat during the crisis.
Amid the various lockdowns, curfews, and periods of restricted movement, people are searching for ways to learn how to love themselves and to take care of their emotional wellbeing.
This has been seen in an uptick of searches for positive ideas and inspiration for boosting mental health.
Pinterest has seen strong growth in searches for “mental health painting,” which have doubled compared to last year, as well as searches for “mental health journaling,” which have increased tenfold.
Autosuggestion also seems to be riding high, with users of the social media site indirectly showing interest in this technique for guiding thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In fact, inspirational quotes are particularly popular, with searches for “self-love quotes” up seven times, and searches for “self-acceptance quotes” up 80% on last year.
“People have always come to Pinterest to discover different ways to practice mindfulness or meditation and to find mental wellness inspiration. Since last year, searches for “mental health check in’ (12x), “healthy mindset quotes’ (5x), and “accepting yourself’ (+40%) all continue to rise.
“It seems people are finding stability within themselves more as the outside world becomes less predictable,” explains Pinterest insights manager Swasti Sarna.
Back in September, the social network highlighted how users were looking for ways to take control of their emotional wellbeing and happiness. Yoga, feng shui, occupational therapy for kids, ASMR, food, and mindful eating
were just some of the popular search topics.
The evolution of these trends is calculated by comparing normalized global searches in December 2019 to December 2020. – AFP Relaxnews
RETURNING to Stockholm in October 2018, after a hiatus of nearly four years, was a sort of balik kampung for me.
Chilly winds blew as I exited Arlanda Airport. But the 5°C temperature and a gloomy horizon could not dampen my spirits as I returned to the city where I’d lived for nearly fourand-a-half years.
I have many friends and fond memories of the Swedish capital.
After unpacking, I headed for the nearest tunnelbana (underground train station) and bought a weekly access card, which cost me SEK325 (RM150): it gave me unlimited travel all over Stockholm and the outskirts on trains, buses and commuter. What a bargain it was!
The following day I visited my friend Don, who hails from Sri Lanka.
Don and his Finnish wife, Katarina have been running a successful travel agency at Radmansgatan for 20 years.
After chatting with them for an hour, I proceeded to Solna and met another friend Tony, who owns a good South Asian restaurant in Stockholm.
From the crowds at Tony’s restaurant, business is definitely flourishing. Tony insisted that I have dinner with him and he personally prepared his signature dish, nihari, a spicy version of the lamb shank, which I tucked in with my naan bread.
Tony told me that he had had a coronary bypass operation at a public hospital last year. The bill? Only SEK300 (RM140). No wonder he complimented the Swedish healthcare system for the treatment he received.
The next day, together with Aru, I had lunch with another Malaysian friend Ravi, at his restaurant in Vesberia. Ravi’s restaurant serves delicious Swedish and Malaysian dishes.
Ravi works hard, starting early in the morning until evening, daily. A compassionate restaurateur, he employs migrant workers from countries like Sri Lanka, India and Venezuela.
One such worker is Agiraa, a Catholic refugee who was an accountant in Caracas. Ravi told me Agiraa is a hardworking employee with commendable work ethics.
On the third day of my stay, I visited the Malaysian embassy and met the staff there and then dropped by the MIDA Stockholm office. Later, with my ex-colleague Norihan, we had Polish fish soup lunch at Grace’s restaurant near our embassy.
Grace was happy to see me and, as in the past, asked me about the quality of her fish soup. As usual, my standard response was, “You are still the amazing Grace!”
Following lunch, I visited my Iraqi friend Yousef, who operates a café at the tunnelbana in Mariatorget, close to where I used to live.
Yousef insisted I at least have a sandwich and a café latte with him. He said he’d recently sold his café located at another tunnelbana, St Eriksplan, which was managed by his wife Nadia, a civil engineer. Nadia now helps him at his Mariatorget café.
At 69, age is catching up with Yousef, and he intends to sell his Mariatorget café next year. The good news is that he will be receiving his pension from the
Iraqi government for his tenure as a professor at a university in northern Iraq. Along with his Swedish pension, his income should be enough for him to live a comfortable life.
Like any other father, he beamed with pride when I enquired about his youngest daughter Sarah, who was entering medical school when I left Stockholm in July 2014. Sarah will soon graduate and qualify as a doctor.
The following day, together with another Malaysian friend Jackson, I returned to Sodermalm, less than a kilometre from Mariatorget tunnelbana, to visit another Malaysian friend Thomas.
A Penangite, Thomas owns a café selling Swedish food and pastries. Judging by the crowds at his café, Thomas’s business is definitely thriving. Still, he squeezed in some time to sit down and chat with me while serving café latte and his famed blueberry pie.
I was indeed delighted to see all my migrant friends prospering – the result of their sheer tenacity, diligence and astuteness. They are living examples that hard work is the key to success in any country.
Migrant entrepreneurs like my friends and their workers have contributed enormously to Sweden’s economy. These migrant entrepreneurs are decent, honest and hardworking people who pay their taxes, which are pivotal in sustaining Sweden’s welfare state.
Any country would be proud to have them as citizens.
Malaysia too has to acknowledge the immense contribution of its migrant workers. They have played a critical role in our economic development, adding to the nation’s prosperity. If not for them, the country would have faced major problems.
But sadly, often out of prejudice, many Malaysians look down scornfully on our migrant workers. It is time we opened our eyes and recognise the migrant workers’ immeasurable contribution to our country and economy.